《牛津英語詞典》收錄WFH、social distancing等新冠肺炎疫情相關詞匯 Oxford dictionary revised to record linguistic impact of Covid-19

《牛津英語詞典》最近收錄了一批新冠肺炎疫情流行用語，“WFH”（在家辦公）、“保持社交距離”和“自我隔離”等詞匯都被納入其中。

With terms such as WFH, social distancing and self-isolation now in common parlance, the Oxford English Dictionary has made an extraordinary update to include Covid-19 and words related to the pandemic in its definitive record of the English language.

隨著“WFH”（work from home，在家辦公）、“保持社交距離”和“自我隔離”等詞匯成為常用詞，《牛津英語詞典》進行了一次非常規更新，將新冠肺炎疫情相關詞匯納入其中。

parlance[?pɑ?l?ns]：n.說法；用語

The dictionary’s executive editor Bernadette Paton said that it was “a rare experience for lexicographers to observe an exponential rise in usage of a single word in a very short period of time, and for that word to come overwhelmingly to dominate global discourse, even to the exclusion of most other topics”.

《牛津英語詞典》執行編輯伯納黛特·帕頓說：“在很短的時間內觀察到一個詞匯的使用量呈指數級上升，并壓倒性地主導全球語言趨勢，甚至讓大多數其他話題毫無容身之地，這對詞典編纂者來說非常罕見。”

Covid-19 has done that, and has thus been added as a new entry in the OED, where it is described as “an acute respiratory illness in humans caused by a coronavirus, which is capable of producing severe symptoms and death, esp. in the elderly and others with underlying health conditions”.

“新冠肺炎”就是這樣一個詞，也由此成為《牛津英語詞典》中新增加的一個詞條，其定義為“一種由冠狀病毒引起的人類急性呼吸道疾病，能產生嚴重的癥狀，致人死亡，特別是對老年人和有其他潛在健康問題的人群。”

exponential[?eksp??nen?l]：adj.指數的

“As something of a departure, this update comes outside of our usual quarterly publication cycle,” said Paton. “But these are extraordinary times, and OED lexicographers, who like many others are all working from home … are tracking the development of the language of the pandemic and offering a linguistic and historical context to their usage.”

帕頓說：“這次更新有些不同，它不在我們通常的季度發布周期。但現在是非常時期，《牛津英語詞典》的編纂者們和其他許多人一樣，都是在家工作，他們正在追蹤新冠肺炎疫情時期語言的發展，并為其詞匯的用法提供語言和歷史背景。”

The OED’s analysis of more than 8bn words of online news stories found that coronavirus and Covid-19, a shortening of coronavirus disease 2019, are now dominating global discourse. While back in December, words such as Brexit, impeachment and climate dominated news, by January, coronavirus was seeing significant use alongside current affairs terms such as bushfire, koala, Iraqi, locust and assassination. By March every single word in the OED’s top 20 list of keywords was related to coronavirus.

《牛津英語詞典》分析了包含80多億個詞匯的網絡新聞，發現冠狀病毒和Covid-19（2019年新冠肺炎的縮寫）現在主導著全球的討論。去年12月，“英國脫歐”、“彈劾”、“氣候”等詞匯占據了新聞頭條，而到了今年1月，“冠狀病毒”與“叢林大火”、“考拉”、“伊拉克”、“蝗蟲”、“暗殺”等時事詞匯一起被大量使用。今年3月，《牛津英語詞典》列出的20個最關鍵詞匯中的每一個單詞都與冠狀病毒有關。

“In January, the words mainly relate to naming and describing the virus: coronavirus, SARS, virus, human-to-human, respiratory, flu-like,” said the OED in an analysis. “By March, the keywords reflect the social impact of the virus, and issues surrounding the medical response: social distancing, self-isolation and self-quarantine, lockdown, non-essential (as in non-essential travel), and postpone are all especially frequent, as are PPE and ventilator.”

《牛津英語詞典》在分析中寫道：“1月的高頻詞主要與病毒的命名和描述有關：冠狀病毒、非典、病毒、人傳人、呼吸系統、流感樣。到了3月，這些關鍵詞反映了新冠病毒的社會影響，以及醫療應對相關問題：保持社交距離、自我隔離、封鎖、非必要的（如非必要的旅行）、推遲、個人防護用品和呼吸機等詞匯的使用都特別頻繁。”

The OED’s lexicographers have noticed a rise in the use of specialist medical terms and new acronyms, such as WFH and PPE. The first noted usage of working from home was in 1995, but Paton notes that “the abbreviation was known to very few before it became a way of life for so many of us”. The abbreviation PPE, for personal protective equipment, dates back to 1977 but was “formerly probably restricted to healthcare and emergency professionals”.

《牛津英語詞典》的編纂者們注意到，越來越多的人開始使用專業醫學術語和新的縮寫詞，比如WFH（在家辦公）和PPE（個人防護用品）。1995年，人們首次注意到“在家辦公”的用法，但帕頓指出，“在居家辦公成為我們許多人的生活方式之前，很少有人知道這個縮寫。”個人防護用品的縮寫PPE可以追溯到1977年，但“以前可能僅限于醫護和急救專業人員使用”。

Social distancing, first used in 1957, “was originally an attitude rather than a physical term, referring to an aloofness or a deliberate attempt to distance oneself from others socially. Now we all understand it as keeping a physical distance between ourselves and others to avoid infection,” wrote Paton.

“保持社交距離”這種說法最早出現于1957年，“最初是一種態度，而不是一個描述身體距離的術語，指的是一種超然的態度，或者在社交上故意疏遠他人。現在我們都明白，這是為了避免感染而與他人保持身體上的距離”，帕頓寫道。

aloofness [??lu?fn?s]：n.冷漠；高傲；超然離群

Previous pandemics have also given rise to new vocabulary. Usage of “pestilence”, or “a fatal epidemic or disease”, first appears in 1382, not long after the bubonic plague peaked in Europe between 1347 and 1351. The adjective “self-quarantined” was first used in 1878 to describe the actions of the villagers of Eyam in the 17th century, who isolated themselves to prevent the second wave of “Black Death” from spreading to surrounding villages.

以前的疾病大流行也產生過新的詞匯。“瘟疫（尤指鼠疫）”或“一種致命的流行病或疾病”這種說法首次出現在1382年，就在歐洲黑死病于1347年至1351年達到頂峰后不久。形容詞“自我隔離的”在1878年首次被用來描述17世紀埃亞姆村村民的行為，他們將自己隔離起來，以防止第二波黑死病蔓延到周圍的村莊。

“It is a consistent theme of lexicography that great social change brings great linguistic change, and that has never been truer than in this current global crisis,” wrote Paton.

帕頓寫道：“詞典編纂的一個一貫主題是，巨大的社會變化帶來了巨大的語言變化，而在當前的全球危機中，這一點從未如此真實。”

英文來源：衛報

翻譯&編輯：yaning